by Nicola Marsh
‘What do you think it is?’
‘The world’s smallest violin.’
He couldn’t help but chuckle at her mutinous expression. ‘Smart and spectacular.’
She swore at him and he just laughed harder.
‘Don’t take this personally, but I came here tonight to see your sister to discuss a business proposition.’
She shook her head, blonde waves tumbling over her shoulders in a tempting gold swath. ‘She’s not interested.’
‘She hasn’t heard what I have to say.’
She squared her shoulders. ‘I’m in charge for the next few months so whatever you have to say, you’ll have to say it to me.’
‘You?’
She bristled at his derisive tone and he couldn’t blame her. But did she honestly think he’d do business with a bohemian waif, albeit a creative genius by what he’d glimpsed tonight, when he knew for a fact Sapphire was the brains behind this outfit?
‘Sapphie is taking three months off, doctor’s orders, so I’m filling in.’
Three months? He didn’t have ninety days to seal this deal. He had a few weeks max before Seaborn’s financials plummeted further and it wasn’t worth his company’s investment to acquire them.
The seriousness of the situation suddenly hit him. He couldn’t lose out on this opportunity, not when acquiring the Seaborn mine would establish Maroney Mine’s complete domination along the entire western seaboard.
And guarantee a strong foothold into the east—and the rest.
He’d returned to Melbourne for one reason only. To take Maroney Mine all the way to the top. Global. Nothing and no one would stand in his way.
He needed that mine. Needed it for vindication, needed it for safety, needed it to prove he was nothing whatsoever like his father.
He steepled his fingers and rested them on his chest. ‘In that case, boss lady, name your price.’
Surprise widened her eyes. ‘For?’
‘Seaborn Mine.’
She laughed, a brittle sound devoid of amusement. ‘Dream on.’
He sat forward and braced his elbows on his knees. ‘On the contrary, you’re the one who’s dreaming if you think for one second you have what it takes to achieve what your sister couldn’t.’
Her hands clenched into fists. ‘What’s that?’
‘Make Seaborn’s a success.’
He only just managed to duck an incoming book.
* * *
Ruby didn’t have a violent bone in her body.
Well, maybe one, considering she’d grabbed the nearest thing handy, a brilliant dystopian thriller, and flung it at Jax Maroney’s insufferably big head.
Pity she’d never been good at sports and her aim missed.
‘That’s quite a temper you’ve got.’ He picked up the book and scanned the back blurb with slow deliberation, giving her time to compose herself.
It didn’t work. Fury flushed her cheeks and she pressed her palms against them in an attempt to cool herself down, dragging in calming breaths until she trusted herself to speak.
‘And that’s quite an imagination you have.’ She lowered her hands, clasped them tightly in her lap, and shook her head. ‘Buying out Seaborn’s? You’ve got to be kidding.’
He stood so fast her head snapped back. ‘I don’t joke. Or have time for games.’
He stepped around the scarred antique coffee table she’d picked up at a Brunswick Street second-hand dealer and towered over her.
As if she’d stand for cheap intimidation tricks.
She leapt to her feet and stood toe to toe. Pity his six-three trumped her five-eight as she momentarily wished she’d kept her heels on.
‘If you’re as smart as your sister, you’ll understand Seaborn’s has a month or two tops to survive before you go under.’
His mouth curved into an infuriatingly sardonic grin, like a croc toying with a wingless chicken on the banks of a river. ‘I’m giving you a profitable way out. You get to keep making your precious jewellery, and all that changes is that I own you.’
Her palm itched to wipe his smirk as he amended, ‘Well, I own your mine.’
The pit of her stomach griped at her family business’s perilous position, but she’d be damned if she let him know how tempting his offer sounded.
‘I have one answer for you.’
The triumphant glint in his eyes made her response all the sweeter.
‘When hell freezes over.’
CHAPTER THREE
IT TOOK a good ten minutes of pacing the showroom after Jax left for Ruby’s blood pressure to lower.
She’d never been prone to rage or theatrics but in the last half-hour she’d almost succumbed to both.
Who the hell did Jax Maroney think he was?
She’d been so irate over his offer she’d forgotten to ask how he’d got onto the exclusive invite-only guest list. Probably greased someone’s palm, like his dear old dad.
Unfair? Maybe, but she wasn’t in a forgiving mood. Livid, she snatched the evening’s inventory list from behind the chrome counter and scanned it again, hoping a few more gold foil sale stickers would’ve miraculously appeared since she’d checked it with Opal.
Nope, still the same glaring truth: they’d barely made enough tonight to cover their gem costs.
Her fingers convulsed, crumpling the paper, and she threw it back on the counter.
Tears of helplessness burned as she stared at the inventory list, taking time to smooth it flat so Opal wouldn’t guess how bad things really were.
Her cousin had stepped in to help when Sapphie had been ordered by the medicos to have time off, leaving behind her precious mine to become general dogsbody around here.
She couldn’t have kept the place going without Opal’s help and had planned on giving her a generous gift—a matching opal ring and bracelet—when her stint finished.
The way things were going, she wouldn’t be able to afford even the setting, let alone the rare black opals she had in mind.
Her gut twisted as she slid open the top drawer behind the counter and extracted an envelope. She weighed it in her hand, tapping it against her palm, as reluctant to open it now as she had been earlier this afternoon when it had been delivered.
She didn’t want to spoil the launch; that had been her excuse then. So what was her excuse now?
Out of options, she slid her finger beneath the flap and ripped, wishing she could tear up the contents before she read it. But disposing of it wouldn’t change facts: Seaborn’s was mortgaged up to the hilt and needed a cash injection fast.
The bank’s letterhead taunted her as she glanced at the document, the exorbitant figures swimming before her eyes.
She didn’t blame Sapphie for mortgaging the title on the showroom and her apartment to pay for their mum’s exorbitant medical bills. She would’ve done the same if she’d known the truth, anything to buy them time and a chance at saving the business.
Now, with creditors baying for repayments, they were in danger of losing the one thing Sapphie had promised their mother they would save.
She couldn’t let it happen. She wouldn’t.
There had to be something she could do.
With a heavy heart, she trudged into her workroom tucked away in the far right corner. She couldn’t create, not in this bleak mood, but she had sorting to do.
Best she keep busy. She wouldn’t sleep tonight anyway.
* * *
Jax opened the door to his apartment, shoved his iPod into the docking station and hit play.
He reeled back from a blast of bass. Good. He needed loud. Louder the better to drown out his thoughts.
The noise filled the apartment as he walked along a marble-tiled hallway, the decibels hitting eardrum-shattering levels in the open lounge.
The beat pounded through him. Hard. Harsh.
Yeah, he needed this, needed to obliterate the tension of the last few hours.
He flung his suit jacket onto the couch, stalked across
to the bar, poured himself a double-shot whiskey and sculled it.
The deafening riffs spilling from a state-of-the-art surround-sound system matched his mood. Raucous. Discordant. Abrasive.
He slammed the glass down, the blaring noise a perfect match for his inner darkness.
He would’ve rather flung the glass at the nearest wall and watched it shatter with a ‘screw you, you stuck-up snobs’.
Being professionally snubbed by his fellow corporate mining giants tonight had seriously rankled.
Personally, he didn’t care what the high society his father had ripped off thought of him, but he needed them to expand his business and that meant attending functions like tonight.
A major pain in the ass.
He needed to re-enter their business circles, needed to convince them he was nothing like his morally corrupt father. Schmoozing the upper echelon of corporate Melbourne was a necessary evil for what he had planned with Maroney Mine expanding beyond the west coast.
But the way they’d looked at him earlier, as if he was the worse kind of scum... Damn it, how could he score business meetings with a hostile crowd who wouldn’t even acknowledge him?
He braced himself against the window sill, oblivious to the million-dollar view of Melbourne many storeys below, tension bunching his shoulders.
He deliberately played techno-punk-grunge when he was this wound up. No lyrics. All racket. Music far removed from his parents’ favourites, Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi.
Great, just what he didn’t need after the evening he’d had, thinking about his folks.
He’d been doing a lot of it lately with Denver’s appeal looming and the constant media harassment begging him for any snippets he could provide. While he’d told them to shove it—in more polite terms, of course—he half expected his mum to show up to vouch for the old crook.
He couldn’t fathom why a beautiful, wealthy woman like Jacqueline Blaise had stuck by his deceitful dad following his arrest when the ugly truth had finally spilled out.
Until her double betrayal. Then everything became frighteningly clear.
He’d been twenty-four when Denver had been jailed for embezzling millions, when he’d known deep in his heart that Jackie had also been an accessory despite the police never finding proof of her culpability.
She’d introduced Denver to her rich friends.
She’d cultivated a high-society clique that included Denver despite knowing the criminal background he’d come from. Apparently Denver’s own father had been murdered in a drug deal gone wrong, a petty criminal trying to rip off a dealer.
His folks never talked of it but Jax had looked it up on the Net when he was thirteen, after he’d overheard Gran berating Jackie for her shoddy taste in men. After reading the full story on his grandfather, Jax remembered feeling relieved that his dad was nothing like that.
What a joke.
His mum also hadn’t blinked twice about helping Denver rip off her moneyed friends, people her family had known for decades.
And with Denver incarcerated, she’d simply waltzed out of Jax’s life without a backward glance.
The mother he’d trusted, the mother he’d loved, gone, just like that.
Now, ten years later, Denver had drummed up another appeal and he wouldn’t be surprised if Jackie came back.
Not only had Jax’s love for his mother taken a serious hit, but he’d lost respect for her too. How could he not, when she buzzed around his charismatic father no matter what he did, yet didn’t give a stuff about her only child and had severed contact with him for a decade?
He’d dealt with her treachery years ago and had finally moved on, but it galled him that Denver had once again raised his ugly head at a time when Jax was finally on top.
Maroney Mine had flourished and he thanked a nebulous god every day his maternal grandmother had put the mine in his name the moment he hit twenty-five.
Wily Gran had hated her daughter’s penchant for ‘scrubbed-up bad boys’ and rather than leave Jackie everything in her will she’d distributed her assets.
He’d been striving to make a success of the mine ever since, no thanks to the adverse publicity from Denver’s trial and criminal ties, and his father’s constant quest to make headlines. Regular magazine interviews, rumours of ring-leading gambling syndicates within jail and a tell-all biography had ensured the Maroney name remained front and centre in the media—for all the wrong reasons.
Little wonder the journos were hounding him for a different angle on the sordid tale.
As he’d told them repeatedly, he had nothing to say on the subject of his father. Not one single word.
Jax’s hands clenched at the last memory he had of his dad before he’d been arrested. Denver had shouted him lunch at the swankiest hotel in Melbourne. They’d lingered over Tasmanian oysters and King Island filet mignon with the most expensive Cab Sav in the house accentuating the meal perfectly.
No one could tell a story like his dad and he’d laughed long and hard over Denver’s exaggerated tales, their closeness something he valued the older he got.
Not many guys he knew in their mid-twenties were still happy to hang out with their dads but Denver had always included him in everything.
Not quite.
Denver had been arrested the next day in a Victorian Police Force special operation targeting corporate crime.
And Jax had been shattered.
The father he’d idolised, the father he’d looked up to, the father he’d admired for working his way up from his blue collar roots—and his own deadbeat dad—to become a business dynamo, was a liar and a thief and not the man Jax thought he was.
He’d stood by Denver: through the trial, the adverse publicity, the sentencing.
Initially he’d done it out of loyalty but as the trial progressed and the extent of Denver’s treachery became apparent, he did it so he could imprint every last detail into his memory as a reminder to never be duped again.
By anyone.
Denver’s non-contact after his incarceration had been a bonus. He wouldn’t have responded if the old man had tried to contact him anyway.
The moment the door had slammed on Denver’s jail cell was the moment he’d slammed the door on his relationship with his father.
Every deceptive minute of it.
The music faded and he sank into the couch, a prickle of unease creeping across the back of his neck.
He might not care about the past any longer but he hated the insidious, floundering feeling that swamped him when he remembered how many lives his father’s lies and cunning and deceit had affected, how many families he’d ruined by wiping away their fortunes.
By the crowd’s response tonight, they wouldn’t let Jax forget his connection to a man who’d ripped off millions.
Screw them.
He had a job to do.
A corporation to take to the top.
Tonight had been the first step towards making that happen. Business as usual.
Now who was lying? He might have finagled an invitation to the Seaborn’s event tonight but once he’d arrived and locked wits with Ruby, business had been replaced by the prospect of pleasure.
Wicked, decadent, all-night-long pleasure.
He wanted her.
He pulsed with it.
And what Jax Maroney wanted he usually got.
Another thing he could thank dear old dad for. He’d learned from a young age that if he demanded, he’d receive. Denver had been a soft touch.
A dad to pick him up from school and take him to the footy and play cricket in the park. A dad to coach him from the sidelines and help with science projects and fix his bike. A dad to beat at wrestling and build a tree house and go camping with.
Denver had done it all, always making time for him. Not that he’d been totally spoiled, but both his parents had fondly indulged their only child.
Which made their emotional defection the harder to comprehend.
Denver had been an amazin
g dad. Kids had been jealous, and Jax had been proud. People flocked to Denver Maroney and he milked his popularity.
Before proceeding to milk people’s hard-earned money, thanks to Jackie’s contacts, culminating in his embezzling millions that landed him in jail.
Jax’s fingers curled into tight fists and he thumped the couch’s armrest.
Damn Denver. Damn him to hell.
With a stack of paperwork waiting and employee performance evaluations to do, the last thing he felt like doing was ruminating on the evening and how thanks to his father’s reputation he’d failed to make inroads in his takeover bid, but the woman at the centre of his plans had succeeded in piquing his interest.
He’d heard of Sapphire Seaborn by reputation, had expected to lock wills with a take-no-prisoners businesswoman.
What he hadn’t expected was to be enthralled and challenged by a smart-mouthed blonde with more bravado than he’d credited her with.
When she’d discovered his identity, and later heard his offer...man, she’d been magnificent, all riled and defiant.
He got hard just thinking about it.
Sadly, he wasn’t at liberty to follow the demands of his libido, not when Ruby Seaborn had what he desperately wanted.
These days, when he wanted something, he went out there and took care of it himself.
Acquiring the Seaborn mine would be no different.
CHAPTER FOUR
RUBY had spent three days with the Seaborn’s accountant poring over ledgers until her eyes stung.
Figures weren’t her strong suit yet she’d listened and learned. And hyperventilated.
No matter how hard they juggled and reassigned, they couldn’t create miracles. Unless Seaborn’s had a sudden influx of cash or cut costs in major areas of the business, they’d shortly be bankrupt.
She knuckled her eyes, hating the futility of tears. She’d never been the type to get emotional but dragging around this burden had her on the verge all the time.
Not a good look during a last-ditch stand.
Last thing she felt like doing with her Saturday was attend the races but a competitor had invited her to their launch and, not wanting to appear churlish, she’d agreed to go with head held high.